♪ into a fifth anniversary of remission? ♪ whatever your business challenge, dell has the technology and services to help you solve it. this morning, the politics of stigma and mental illness. plus, the vicious brutality of the taliban against a pakistani team. and this week in voter suppression goes to florida. but first, if you can't believe you're president, who can you believe? good morning. i'm melissa harris-perry. we're almost there. almost there. debates are happening. two down, two to go. tuesday, president obama and governor mitt romney meet again and i will be ready my phone in

hand. twitter abuzz as i have been during the last two debates. because that's how we watch debates now. get a few friends over for a debate watching party to engage in a running commentary during the 90-minute bout. you may still go through the fact checking that comes out the next day in something like the paper. but really, it's all real time now. you can scan the debates via twitter through hash tag fact check and second by second, each statement uttered by the candidates gets churned thu the fact check mill. you can double fact they can the believability of the source based on the hash tag by the fact check. but some folks just find this all a lot of noise. a lot of noise to cover the very real fact that we have accepted that our elected leaders will and do lie constantly. gone is patrick moynahan and his

adage of you're entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts. in the age of post truth politics, we no longer share a baseline of what counts as a fact. that was clearly on display this week at the one and only vice presidential debate. >> he'll keep saying this $5 trillion plan i suppose. it's been discredited by six other studies and their own deputy campaign manager acknowledged it wasn't correct. >> the only way to find $5 trillion in loopholes is cut the mortgage -- cut the health care deduction for middle class people. to send their kids to college. that's why -- >> is he wrong approximate that. >> he is wrong about that. >> it's at fact that the vice president found the congressman to be hilarious. but the fact is that politics has always been extremes, often flying in the face of what many experience as reality. the only difference now is that

the extremes seem to be all that exists. we no longer share the facts upon which our opinions are based. because when multiple polls with scientifically accurate sample sizes all give the same numbers and are still questioned for accuracy or even when the bipartisan independent bureau of labor statistics which is firewalled from both the white house and the labor department accused of lying and padding numbers out of political partisanship or when the current president of the united states of america is still questioned despite the hard-and-fast evidence of his long form birth certificate, then we know we are engaging in post truth politics. even when we fact check one another, we still do not believe the evidence. not that we shall not be beholden to fact checkers reins supreme. robust debate is reduced to discussion about what counts as

real, credible or verifiable. vice president biden delivered it directly on thursday. >> look, folks, use your common sense. who do you trust on this? a man who introduced a bill to raise it $6400 a year knowing it and passing it and romney saying he signed it or me and the president? >> that's what it boils down to. not whose policies are best. but who do you think is telling the truth? after the first presidential debate last week, many fact checkers worked overtime trying to untangle many of governor romney's statements. but perhaps the efforts were in vein as conservative king maker, karl rove pointed out alleging that romney is a serial deceiver is a hard sell. mr. romney came across last week as practical, thoughtful, authentic and a straight shooter. in fact, romney is betting on voters not being outraged by lies. he's making the sure bet that the electorate takes a bit of

dishonesty with their election. like sugar with your medicine. that might explain the explosion of fact checking sites. for one, the pulitzer prize win poe lit a fact.com. the truth omter. even truth is on the spectrum. the top of the list of mostly true, half true and mostly false on their meter is a hard-and-fast definition of political truth. a true statement is true if it's accurate and there's nothing significant missing. while i rely on this work, i lament the loss of the shared understanding of knowledge. we need the collective belief that meeting point of communication. language has served that purpose. that shared thread stitching us together. we have agreed that there is a definition to match each word and now you string those words together and how you interpret what is said, yes, that's up to the holder.

but i can't say that yes means no and that no means yes. in a democracy, we need shared standards. without them, consequences are severe. given our history of hand recounts and fears of ballot stuffing, i worry we might get to an election night and still not know who the next president will be. if we reject facts and institutions as bankrupt, we're halfway down the road to election trutherism. richard has en of slate.com asked this week if the election is close, will we believe the outcome? because as he writes, if my guy won, the election is fair and square. but if your guy one, there must be -- >> telling the truth is a revolutionary act. with me now, diana if you

remember got roth, senior fellow at the manhattan institute. former chief of staff of president george w. bush's council of economic advisers, also author of regulating to disaster. jason johnson is a political science professor and an editor of politic 365.com and the source magazine. joy reed of the gri owe.com and bill schneider political analyst of the mod ral thierate think t. great to have you here. >> the lefties watching the first presidential debate had this great desire for the president to fact check governor romney while it was happening. based on what i've said, would that have been strategic or useful as a position for him to take in that? >> i'm so glad you're talking about this. wooech reached a point, we've got a your president, my president dialog going on. republicans only accept the

legitimacy of republican presidents and democrats, because of bush v gore and issues with how george bush came into office questioned his first term. i think particularly with conservatives, they have opted out of the general fact universe. they have decided that -- >> they have opted out of it. >> they said barack obama was-elected because a corn, the false voters at the poll. there's no way that democrats could really win the white house. there's no way that could happen. there's polls showing it was rigged. a conspiracy against him. i think it's partly because of conservative media that promoted this victim mentality on the right that everything is a lie. all science, all data is against you. >> i want to listen to mrs. romney, ann romney in response to the fact checking that happened after the debate and

her language about sort of what that's like. let's listen to mrs. romney here. >> what do you think about the charges that he lied? the other side well he lied his way through that whole debate. >> lied about what? this is something that he's been saying all along, this is what he believes. this is his policy, these are his statements. i mean, it's sort of like someone that in the sand box that lost the game and they're going to kick sand in someone's face and say you liar. >> i saw you shaking your head pretty vigorously as joy was talking about the notion that republicans are outside of the fact universe. >> i don't think that most conservatives would say that barack obama won the presidency because of some vote rigging. the margin of his win was so much that you cannot put it down to anything. it's not like bush and gore for example in 2000. i think one thing that is really extreme is for president obama to say continually that mitt romney proposed a $5 trillion

tax cut. when his own campaign -- they said we can get $3.8 trillion from deductions. that would only make it a $1.2 trillion tax cut. that could made up with economic growth. president obama continues to say it's $5 trillion. even his spokeswoman has said it's not a $5 trillion tax cut. >> this is interesting, diane. bill, i think she brings up an interesting distinction between birtherism as you point out, i think that's accurate. certainly you don't have a majority of american services are not birthers, but there's enough of it infecting the sort of the american discourse right now that it becomes a leedge it talking point. >> it's not being talked about now. the birthers are not on the front page of the newspapers. you can't judge people by the fringe groups. >> i got to say, when you have presidential candidates -- i'm going to give you that it's a

fringe. i'm going to give you that. for example, that mitt romney is not a birther. there does seem to be a distinction between for example those kinds of aspects or questions of truth versus as diana brings up, a debate about whether or not the romney tax plan constitutes a $5 trillion issue. so in other words, are we -- which aspects are different opinions of the facts and what are really sort of things we can say that's just not true? >> there is a legitimate debate here. diana mentioned, the figures about the tax cut. if you have a 20% across the board tax cut, can you make it up, even most of it with by curbing deductions? that's a debatable issue. can you actually do that? you can't take mitt romney's word pour it that we'll make up 3.trillion of the tax cut by cushing deductions. ha deductions? what do they add up to? you have to debate those issues. they're all based on

suppositions and how much economic growth will be generated by a tax cut? that's based on assumptions and projections and suppositions. those are debatable, not fact. >> those are debatable. that feels to me quite different than the issue of was the president of the united states born in the united states. is he in fact a citizen and i think even sort of mr. romney, do you or do you not support roe v. wade and a woman's right to choose. jason, you and i are both college professors. obviously there's a lot of debate about truth within what we do. >> right. >> i'm concerned about the idea that we don't even in the political world know what count as evidence as the argument for the truth. >> sometimes we don't even have discussions about the evidence. we have more fact checking -- levels of aggression, did obama seem bored. was he thinking about his anniversary? before anyone talked about whether or not the man said the truth. that's the problem. we have too much discussion of

the pageantry of it and not whether or not the men were saying the truth or if it's applicable if -- i'm going to come back, diana to the issue you raised around taxes when we come back. i want to figure out what are the facts here. who is going to raise them, who is going to cut them. what is the truth behind the tax plans in that's next. victor! victor! i got your campbell's chunky soup. mom? who's mom? i'm the giants mascot. the giants don't have a mascot! ohhh! eat up! new jammin jerk chicken soup has tasty pieces of chicken with rice and beans. hmmm. for giant hunger! thanks mom! see ya! whoaa...oops! mom? i'm ok. grandma? hi sweetie! she operates the head. [ male announcer ] campbell's chunky soup. it fills you up right.

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let's revisit thursday night's vice presidential debate again. here's moderator martha raddatz asking paul ryan about the tax plan. >> what we're saying is here's

our framework, lower tax rates 20%. raise about $1.2 trillion through income taxes. we forgo $1.2 trillion in loopholes and deep ducks. we're saying deny them to higher taxpayers so more of the income taxed a broader base of taxation to lower tax rates across the board. >> translation. >> what we're saying is -- >> i hope i get time to respond. >> we want to work with the congress on how best to achieve this. that means successful. what we're saying is lower tax rates 20%, start with the wealthy. work with congress do it. >> can you guarantee this math will add up in. >> absolutely. >> how do we know if the math does or does not add up if we don't know the specifics of the plan? >> we do not know. it's all based on assumptions and economic models that are complicated. we don't know if they're going to add up. we don't have to. but he's asking us to take his word for it. joe biden is disputing that.

>> the academic literature does show that when tax rates go down, we have more growth. president obama's first chairwoman of the council, christina roma had a lengthy -- higher taxes reduced gdp. lower taxes result in more gdp growth. when you have more gdp growth, you have more tax revenue. that reduces the deficit. >> go ahead. >> i was going to say, actually, the reports by folks like larry bartels, demonstrate that when we have higher tax rates effective tax rates that we actually have both higher gdps as well as higher household incomes relative to inflation. they don't make a causal plane. they don't say raising taxes causes economic growth. nor i think even if one could demonstrate that there was a correlation between, for example, lower tax rates and gdp, one also can't make a claim unless you can demonstrate that there's a rate of change difference that causes the

growth. you can't make those causal argument. >> economists do make those argument. it works like this. if the government takes less of your money, you're going to work harder. if you're an investor, you want to take risks, if you have a 15% capital gains tax rate, then you're going to gain more from that investment than if you have a 50% capital gains tax. >> let's be clear. when you say economists say this. then you begin to talk about the psychology of it. you know, one of the things that economists are really quite bad at is making those -- they tend to actually sort of set out at the beginning before they are even doing their models what their assumptions about how people maximize their utility, maximize their sense of self. those claims are about internal workings. they are as much, i think as bill said it a moment ago, you have to take their word for it. they're faith claims. not evidentiary claims. >> economists have evidentiary claims. that's christina romea the first chairwoman.

edward prescott, a nobel prize winner who looked at different countries. >> my -- >> evidentiary. >> probably part of why the president has been reluctant to end the bush era tax cuts on the middle class. >> that's what he said in 2010. he said we don't want to raise tax when is we had gdp growth. and it was higher than it is now. >> if you're going to have anxiety about the deficit. you can't have both things. you can't deficit hawk and make a claim about taxes. >> joy, let me let you in on this. mark zandi, from moody's analytic looked at the numbers as well and said the romney plan, the arithmetic does not add up. if you lower marginal tax rates across the board and say you make it up with unnamed deductions, the biggest deductions available to you are things like the mortgage interest deduction, things that have a lot of capital behind them. people want them. deductions for health care costs, educational write off. that's where the biggest pot of money is. since the romney team won't say

that's where they're going -- when you talk about historic tax reduction, you can't compare the deep reductions from the kennedy era when we had 96% marginal tax rates and dropping those significantly and in the reagan era where you had a significant steep cut in the marginal tax rate, then you compare that with the clinton era where we increased marginal tax rates and had the longest sustained period of accelerated economic growth in our recent history. you can't compare. >> as interesting as all this is. this went over the head of 60% of the public out there. they would need an economics class to understand what's going on. this go goes to the core point. if you don't understand basic economics, this doesn't make any sense to you. you won't learn this from a debate. that's where the challenge is from. >> my favorite thing on taking things that i don't understand and making them clear. on the blog fact check he talks about this $5 trillion question

and the fact that it's controversial. it says that we know that the romney/ryan plan won't work on those making under $200,000 a year. none of the studies have disprchb that. we don't know what the loopholes are. if it's about the mortgage interest deduction. a deduction which i could argue vigorously against its existence. but only against putting it into existence. once it exists to take it would have a devastating -- >> nobody is talking about getting rid of the mortgage deduction. they're talking about limiting it. >> won't specify what they are. >> conservatives say broaden the tax base, what's that a euphemism for is raising taxes on lower income people. to your point, to make it really simple, if you have a million dollars and i give you an additional $20,000. you don't have to spend that additional $20,000 because

you've got a million dollars. if you have $20,000 and i give you $500. you're spending every dime because you have to. >> immediately. >> that's why lowering taxes on lower income people boosts the economy because they go to walmart that money. a rich person doesn't go to walmart with their extra monday incompetent. >> if i had a nerdland sticker, i would give it to you right now. that is the break it down -- the less money you have, a little bit more goes right back into the economy. i have one question on exactly that issue. it's a question that's deeply stimulating. that's next. [ male announcer ] feeling like a shadow of your former self? c'mon, michael! get in the game! [ male announcer ] don't have the hops for hoops with your buddies? lost your appetite for romance? and your mood is on its way down. you might not just be getting older. you might have a treatable condition called low testosterone or low t. millions of men, forty-five or older, may have low t.

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on. in 22 days, 18 hours, 33 minutes and 14.1312 seconds the first polls will open for the election of the american president. but here's what we know -- suspect the economy is going to be an important part of the decision that is made 22 days from now. the big issue? did the stimulus work? >> yes. >> yes. >> no it did not work. >> we have three yeses and a no. let here it. >> i believe it worked but it wasn't big enough because they underestimated the depth of the financial crisis. >> the sector, cause a much deeper recession. it kept us out a deep depression, but it didn't turn the entire economy around and diana is right about one thing, people do not believe it worked because the economy has not completely recovered to where it used to be. >> this is so important. let's look at the study. the congressional budget office analysis of the stimulus.

it has a demonstration of it working going from 1.6 million up to 4.6 million real gdp growth unemployment heads down. that should be 7.8 not 1.8. that would be pretty ext extraordinary if it was. on the one hand, you see that moving down. that said, let's just point this out. so much of our economy rests on what we think about what is going on. which is not quite a fact, right in the bureau of labor statistics number, you were there, diana, are factual but the o robustness of economy isn't part of our emotions. >> the bureau of labor statistics, the employment survey when they count jobs created, we get one number one month and then it's revised. a year later, we have the real number. and the unemployment rate is a survey of 60,000 households. that jumps around and there's a

big marchin of error. the stimulus did not work. we have a 1.3% gdp growth rate. we have 23 million americans unemployed or looking for work or -- if anyone had said in january of 2009 that we were going to spend a trillion dollars and end up with a 1.3% gdp growth rate, a high unemployment rate, labor force force participation rate equal to september 1981, congress would not -- >> the economy was not good. what would those figures have been without the stimulus? >> exactly. >> this is a question of a floor, right? i mean, this is a -- if you're falling and i catch you, and i put a floor under you, is that working even if i don't bring it all the way up. that's a debatable question. >> a third of what -- >> sorry. how bad would this have been if i hadn't done it? that's what barack obama has been trying to say for years and no one can understand that. i look at the teachers lost or

the firemen lost or the pension plans on state levels that would have absolutely been destroyed or disappeared or been completely cut if the stimulus money was not put in. could have things been better in yes. it could have been significantly worse without the stimulus. if we spent more it could -- >> it is very hard to run for reelection if you're the president on the argument, you know what folks, it could have been worse platform. >> that is a tough sell. >> we have a deficits of $1 trillion for the fourth year in a row. you're saying, we need to borrow more money? that's incredible. you look at two countries that are different. you say what could have been done differently. canada, germany, they have higher gdp growth rates. >> i think we take a look at the eurozone there would be strong claim that austerity measures do not provide -- >> the countries that did austerity are growing slower than the united states. the bottom line, we spent a trillion dollars which a third

was tax cuts, we wasted a lot of that money doing tax cutting. we should have spent the whole trillion. the bottom line, we have a spending driven economy. when you have consumeser withdraw spending partly out of terror, they're losing value on their homes, banks withdrawing lending. you sucked all of that money and spending out of the economy, someone has to replace it. we've always had the government step in and replace that spending. we did it with fdr, even george w. bush did it. he hired a lot of government workers during the recession. >> post 9/11 we don't think of the tsa as a government jobs program, that's what it is. >> when i was in the bush administration, we didn't have four years of $1 trillion deficits. >> no. you created them. you made them. >> no, we did not. >> it was not a spending caused deficit. it was a war caused and tax cut caused deficit. >> not such a high def sit as we have now. they were not cuts in marginal tack rates.

they were giving back money to people in terms of programs -- >> not stimulative. >> look, everyone knew that we were in a recession, everyone knew it was terrible. part of why barack obama got elected. it didn't how much money they were getting back. people were still scared. people were not going to spend their money. you can't blame that on a president and say look he was the boogeyman. people will hold on to their money tight. >> absolutely. we see in our new -- the new numbers out of the consumer confidence is that consumer confidence is you. we may be in a place where we're starting to move out of it. we've gotten the consumer confidence index moving up. there's a big truth fight going on all week. what really happened in libya? i want to talk a bit about that next. [ female announcer ] most whitening strips

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it's been more than a month since the u.s. consulate in benghazi was attacked. it's clear that the first interpretation of what happened on that day was not correct. the day after the attack on september 12th, the state department linked the benghazi attacks to the pro-tests in cairo. they said it was due to the inflammatory content on the internet. we now know it was a planned attack and no protesters were present. here was secretary of state hillary clinton explaining the discrepancy. >> i do know this. there is nobody in the administration motivated by anything other than trying to understand. to this day, we do not have a complete picture. we do not have all the answers. no one in this administration has ever claimed otherwise.

every one of us has made clear that we are providing the best information we have at that time. and that information continues to be updated. >> so while we do know that the first explanation provided bied obama administration regarding the attack in benghazi was not correct, what we're still to learn is if it was intentionally dishonest. due in part to the political stakes that surround this case, the facts do matter. back to the panel. jason, let me ask. it feels like there's a difference between and a meaningful one and one that i care about a as a citizen, whether or not the white house and the state department misled us about benghazi or had one set of fact that changed? >> here's the difficulty. the reason we lost so many people is not just because of the attacks in libya but because of bureaucracy. i don't know and i don't think anyone can honestly say that barack obama found out that they were requesting more security.

no, we're going to let them suffer and figure it out. those decisions don't necessarily hit the white house. there's probably not an embassy anywhere that doesn't want more security on 9/11. how many people did this decision go through and when did the white house find out? i don't think that's something we can find out. >> there's a lot of reason to think that whatever requests were made, a, that congressional appropriations were the key to whether or not they could happen rather than what was go going on in the white house, second, that benghazi might not have been the site of where additional security would have happened and third, if the additional security was requested had been there, given that this was a planned attack, i guess part of it for me is like our sober minded understanding of this has to leave room for the fact that in a circumstance like what we're facing in benghazi and libya, you cannot take risks to zero. >> right. >> demanding you take it to zero is dishonest. >> i think it's wrong for it to

become a political football. i think it was refreshing to have an administration say you know what, we got it wrong. >> two weeks later. >> it's very different than ten years after they enter the war in iraq and spend billions of dollars in a war where we were actively misled into the war. two weeks is not bad in policy. >> misleading us from day one. >> how would they know that? information on the ground? that's the question. >> we knew the ambassador had asked for security. >> moammar gadhafi, people liked the ambassador there. people thought, of all the places we're worried about, we're not concerned with. >> can i -- >> yes, you can. >> not only did they bungle it by no security, they didn't even secure the embassy site afterwards. it was cnn that found the ambassador as diary four days later.

they should have sent people there if they took it serious. >> i want to be clear here. are you saying that the current administration does not take seriously the death of our diplomats and american lives in benghazi? are you saying they did not take it seriously? >> i'm saying they put a misleading story out to hide their own incompetence which included not sealing off the site and collecting the papers. they knew it was not the video right away. >> i guess i would say on the question of truth, that is possible but that you simply do not have the security clearance to know whether or not that is true with a capital t. >> because they admitted two weeks later. >> they certainly did not admit that. >> they admitted it was al qaeda two weeks later. >> what they said is -- what they said is and i think the secretary of state said it. we have one set -- we had a set of information on the day it happened. we reported at quickly as

possible the information that we had. in the two weeks since, we've come to understand that the circumstances are different. we are now reporting those differences. >> there were people right away, like michael levine's foundation for -- >> michael levine. >> he said what it was. it turned out to be al qaeda. >> he's an idea log who thinks that saddam hussein had weapons of mass destruction. i discount everything he says. >> i think that -- >> it was al qaeda. >> when you start saying what the administration knew and you have no read on what they knew, i think that's unfair. number two, you have to remember what was happening at the time. at the time you had the interruptions of protests over this ridiculous trailer that were happening in egypt. when the concurrent and the same thing were happening in various other places, the logical conclusion that -- clearly the terrorists took advantage of that situation to mount an attack. >> i think it's unfair to read

into what other people -- >> are you going to start with mitt romney came out with a statement immediately after the incident and it turned out to be completely wrong. >> it was both absolutely wrong and i think it was appalling because he was not even aware at the time that there had been the loss of american lives at that point. that said, diana, thank you for being here today. the res of you are sticking around. >> no. we already planned for you to leave at this point. up next, really it's a heartbreaking story. one that is enraging. the story of a teenager targeted and shot because she wanted to get an education. that when we come back. ♪

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her name is -- she's still a child. but because she advocated for girls to get an education in pakistan, the taliban declared her a threat. on tuesday, the taliban hunted her down and she and her fellow

classmates were on their way home from school. a gunman approached their school bus and according to eyewitness accounts he asked which one was her and screamed she is propagating against the taliban, the soldiers, she must be punished. then he shot her at point-blank range. the bullet hit her in her head and lodged in her shoulder near her neck. two other girls were also wounded in the attack. her condition is critical but has stabilized. arrests have been made but this senseless shooting implores me to ask how can a 14-year-old child be considered such a threat that grown men fear her enough that feel the need to extinguish her voice? why? because despite the taliban's efforts to keep girls out of sight and ignorant, she pressed on. even after the taliban closed her school in 2009, she was determined to get an education. but don't take my word for how remarkable she is. see for yourselves in an

interview from 2009 recorded by new york times.com video journalist adam he will i can the day after her school closed. >> they cannot stop me. i will get my education, if it is in home, school or anyplace much this is our request for the world, save our world, save our pakistan. >> she was 11 in that video. let me repeat that. she was 11. she began to appear on tv and publicly advocate for female education and because of her efforts, she was awarded the national peace award by pakistan last year. she also chronicled her experiences on a blog for the bbc's website after the area where she lived was overrun by militant islamists. for some, her profile may have been too high, her cause too radical for a female let alone a

child. but i say this directly to the taliban who carried out this shameless act. you may have harmed her physically but you have not harmed her cause. you've helped it. your cowardly actions will now serve as a rallying cry for other young girls and women seeking empowerment and a better life through education. your gutless terrorist actions have created a thousand more who will hopefully find the kurnl to say with amplified voice, no. no, you will not terrify us from having an education. no. you will not terrify us from having a voice. no, you will not terrify us from having a future. rest and get well malala. the world needs your voice. the world is praying for you. flip your look from day, to night soft, to bright with covergirl blast flipstick. wearable, blendable double end-able!

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we're back talking about the

cowardly shooting of a 14-year-old. malala yousufzai who was shot by the taliban. the taliban sought to silence her an education advocate for girls. her condition has stabilized. but she and her father continue to face death threats. >> i'm joined by an msnbc contributor and foreign policy analyst for newsweek. talk to me first about what the message -- this is an act certainly against malala but an act of terrorism against girls in general. what is the message the taliban was attempting to send here? >> the message is clear. don't dare to shape society. this is what malala was doing. this is what the women in pakistan and afghanistan start access to education after september 11th. they start to go back to school. then when you go back to school bs you're a free thinker, a critical thinker.

you might not accept their view of the world. they want to impose on the girls to stay ignorant and they can control their brain and bodies. they are not only losing the battle, they're losing the argument. what i'm angry here about is not that they only did it, the fact that pakistani army is as responsible for this as much as the taliban. >> talk to me about that. it does feel like there's a level of complicity here. on the one hand, i have rage about the individuals involved in this. but there is a -- >> there's a political system that is fed actually by washington, d.c. in a way. because we give the army, we give them $20 billion in ten years and they didn't pretend from anything. try to handle the talibans or try to give us information where they are. what they've been doing is arming, funding, and sharing

logistic information with the talibans and they've been allowing them to operate in safe havens. this episode actually and the fact first we discovered that bin laden was living there ten years, he was protected by them. then this episode actually is showing how ineffective they are and how coward they are as much as the taliban. >> i want to point this out in case people haven't been following this story. we're not fear rising that the taliban is responsible: they took responsibility and they put out a statement saying with pride that they did this. saying that they will continue to come after this teenager, they will attempt again to kill her. >> it's clear that not only are they responsible, they'll continue to doing that. unless the pakistani army will intervene, we'll arrest some people. it's time for action. it's time for them to cut that cord with jihadist group and with extremist group. it's time for society to

develop. this is the only we can have a durable peace. how can we think that pakistan in the future, that actually have the atomic bomb can be a peaceful country that can relate to its neighbor pakistan or ind kra in a different way or to us. look, washington is closing up the army for years, what we're building up is a well spring of poison within society that one day will -- you open up a school, you close a jail. you are building civil society. you shape a country by allowing girls, especially women to education. >> so we've seen as you talk about simple society and this idea that education is this space where durable peace is possible, we have seen girls wearing publicly i am malala. part of what is so -- >> that's the first time. >> that is extraordinary. is this the act that actually

brings them down by -- i mean, this statement that i am her. >> yes. >> look, if you think of the arab spring, how did it started? one man in tunisia against a regime. he actually burned himself because he was fed up with the abuse. this episode will change the pakistani dynamic. this is the beginning of a bigger revolution that's a revolution of mind, a peaceful one and a revolution of i am that says, you will not control my brain anymore or my body. but i want to say something. when there are public and party talks about abortion and the way they see things, how can we think that in the future they will go to these countries if they will win the election, go to the countries and say we want civil society that is strong and separation between state and faith. they will look back and say what are you talking about? you are the one that actually not allowing women to have abortion and question and contraception and other things. we need that understand that

whatever we say, whatever we promote as policy will affect other countries and our foreign policies. >> our choices right now. in terms of our foreign policy, our electoral choices make a difference. >> to the many people that are fighting daily against extremists from all sides. that wants to control their bodies and their brain. >> i sew appreciate you being here today. we're both the mothers of daughters. we know that whatever good comes from this, it never reduces the horror that is this act and just to put that here. thank you for coming. >> thank you for having me. >> coming up next, back to domestic politics and down to the sunshine state. it's time for this week in voter suppression. game! [ male announcer ] don't have the hops for hoops with your buddies? lost your appetite for romance? and your mood is on its way down. you might not just be getting older. you might have a treatable condition called low testosterone or low t.

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and the family car to do an experiment. we put a week of her family's smelly stuff all in at once to prove that febreze car vent clips could eliminate the odor. then we brought her family to our test facility to see if it worked. [ woman ] take a deep breath, tell me what you smell. something fresh. a beach. a clean house. my new car. [ woman ] go ahead and take your blindfolds off. oh!! hahahaha!!! look at all this garbage!!! [ male announcer ] febreze car. eliminates odors for continuous freshness, so you can breathe happy. welcome back. i'm melissa harris-perry. when i think about florida, i think thinking about palm trees, sunshine, oranges, disney world. scenes that make you want to put

on your mouse ears and toss back a mojito. when it's three weeks until election day and any of us think about florida, we think about this guy. the infamous hanging chads of the 2000 bush/gore election which earned florida a place in voting infamy. the suppress sif efforts taking place in 2012 could make those seem quaint. which brings me to this week in voter suppression. now, this isn't the first time that we visited the sunshine state in this series and not just because it has 29 electoral votes and the election could come down to florida, florida, florida. we've covered it because that state's republican governor, rick scott, has been purging the voter rolls of allegedly ineligible voters and was enabled this month to keep doing just that. all while until recently a firm call strategic allied consulting

was being paid to register voters and get out the vote. this isn't the website anymore. it's been replaced by a statement of innocence. the same firm fired by the rnc late last month after a florida elections official referred more than 100 potentially fraudulent voter registrations to investigators, that same quote-unquote consultant who ran -- nathan sproul is now hiring workers for a voter canvassing operation this fall in as many as 30 states according to a report of the los angeles times. not through allied consulting, sproul is using a generic sounding company called issues advocacy partners, whose website might look familiar to you. not so much? maybe a little bit? okay. it's not just state lawmakers and supposedly disgraced gop operatives who appear to be out

to unbalance the electoral scale in florida. it's also groups like tampa's vote fair and true the vote which aside from awkward sentences for names are in search for solutions of voter fraud. a problem that doesn't exist. my panel is back. high ram columnist. >> joy reid and bill schneider. before we come to the panel, i want to take you to florida where our guest per ear a is in miami. he's the executive director of the new majority education fund and the miami workers center. gio, nice to have you here. >> melissa, great to be on. welcome to florida. >> i know, right. it's cold up here. i would totally be there right now. first, i want to read you this lead from an ap article out this past thursday. at polls, fears of voter suppression and intimidation. kimberly kelly of tampa provided

election commissions with thousands of names of people she thinks should be removed from the polls and are ineligible to vote. she's part of tampa vote fair. please tell us about this group. >> well, that group and true the vote that are operating mostly in tampa, they're electoral vigilante groups. they exist now to come out and test people, challenge people's votes. but what they really come out of it a whole history, particularly here in florida as you know under rick scott and an extremist florida legislature that took over in 2010 who part of their vow was to put down the unprecedented electoral up rising of minorities, black, latino, caribbean and young people that came out in 2008. >> gihan, when you say electoral uprising, you mean voting? >> voting.

unprecedented numbers. yes. unprecedented numbers of people -- of the new rising electoral. young people, women, latinos came out in 2008. it was an electoral uprising, a beautiful one. when the extremists came to power in 2010, part of their vow was to put down that uprising. they have a view that politicians should decide their electorate. not an expanding electorate deciding their representatives. so they went to all sorts -- >> gihan, this point is such a critical one. what we're looking at here, we're talking about an individual private citizen, not elected, who is making lists of people that she believes are ineligible voters. i was sort of teasing and saying should i just make a list of like all my friends and family who i happen to know are likely to vote different than me and send it in as they are likely

voters going to commit voter fraud. you used the language of vigilanteism. isn't this illegal? it's one thing to change the laws as we were seeing in ohio and pennsylvania. but isn't this voter intimidation against the voting rights act? >> whatever it is, it's a complete waste of resources and creating a complete boogeyman. what they're trying to do is they are wasting the resources, the time of the supervisor of elections and the department of state to spend time even dealing with this and not dealing with the fact that we have a huge election coming up that really needs to be run well. they're creating hysteria amongst the press, amongst the state over something that really doesn't exist. there is as much chance of finding intentional voter fraud as there is a chance of getting struck by lightning. but they are creating this hysteria basically as well on a racial basis. they're stirring things up

saying that ex felons and illegal i will jens will be voting. >> i wanted to bring joy reid in here. you spent a lot of time in florida. i wondered if there was something in particular around this that you wanted to respond about. >> absolutely. it's good to see my good friend gihan who i knew for a long time. >> how are you in. >> how are you doing? >> i'm good. >> the situation, they were caught -- not called the association. they call themselves lincoln academic. changed their names. >> abc consulting, acme consulting. they were caught submitting false names all over the state in several counties of people who were not real people. and the question i have is the majority looking at the possibility that absentee ballots could be submitted in the names of the people? in florida you don't need an

i.d. to vote absentee and we've already had a scandal in miami surrounding the mayor's race of potentially fraudulent absentee ballots. are you guys looking into that? what are the chances of that happening? >> well, we're looking into it. i mean, as you know, the places where resources are going through voter fraud in terms of the places where they're currently looking isn't where most of the fraud is happening. as you know, most of that fraud is happening in absentee ballot situations because it's almost wholly unregulated. we're in a number of people are looking into it. it's on the front page of the new times this week. but there's very little chance with this administration, it looks like, at this point that that will be looked into. i think it's what we need -- we want to talk about really trying to figure out where potential fraud is, we need to really look at and regulate the absentee ballot market across the state. that's where the biggest loopholes are. >> let me bring in bill

schneider here. i've been worried about this issue that in part, the left ourselves into a corner saying there isn't voter fraud, which is accurate. the point is there's no voter fraud that would be addressed by the kinds of policies that we see republicans, state legislators doing and yet, we're now open, right, to this other kind of fraud? >> what is happening is these protective measures, they're a solution for which there is no known problem. but there could be a problem because something like 40% of americans are eligible to vote early by absentee vote without any reason before the election. many people are worried about those absentee voters. what's going to protect the secrecof the ballot. how do you prevent a father or husband or mother from telling their son or wife or daughter how to vote and demanding i see the ballot before you send it in. and make sure people don't unduly influence that vote. in a lot of situations, people

send in their ballot early, something happens in the campaign and they want their ballot back. >> you can't. that's not how it works. >> that bothers me. >> this speaks to a general problem that i have. all these voter i.d. laws. this is something that every single republican needs to be honest about and even some democrats. the right to vote is like freedom of speech. we don't have 50 different freedom of speech laws in the united states. there should be a general rule, this is how you vote. the real concern that -- if we have a romney presidency, he will do nothing to stop these sorts of laws from being encapsulated in every single state. it will be the end of voting for young people and poor people and minority. this is not hyperbole. in his presidency, he would in the sen the attorney general to stop this. this is a major problem. >> this point, it's not even that he would introduce this legislation, but rather the role of the doj. in fact, it's one of the things that i think the obama administration has not been as

up front about in terms of a real victory that they could be which is how aggressive this department of justice has been in an attempt to try to stop these kinds of measures. jonathan, let me let you in here. >> absolutely. i would add to everything said, that the tremendous irony of this round of voter suppression in florida is that the 2011 law ha started this snowball from rolling down the hill is inciting voter fraud as a -- the public health. the irony here is that what's happening here is that this is producing ill health. all of this anxiety and this concern and feeling of the system. people are feeling very, very disconnected as a result of this as well. >> interesting. we're going to stay on this. gihan. i want to give you one last word on this. if this is vigilanteism to keep people away from the polls, what can your organization and others do to protect their right to cast a vote?

>> well, the result of this, the worst result of all of this is that voters who should and would vote are confused. the biggest thing that we're doing is in the streets, in the churches, on doors, we're educating and telling our people exactly that their voting rights are still intact. how to vote. educating that they can vote in early ballots. how to vote absentee, the day of. we're getting early voting marches and rallies going starting next saturday. so that there's really a momentum that the roadblocks put in front of us don't stop the people from coming out to vote. we're doing a teletown hall talking people through exactly what their rights and rules are. we're also going to be doing door knocking, souls to the polls and making a lot of noise and fun to really make the democratic voting experience what it should be. a right for every citizen here to participate in the process.

and that they can't take away from us. we're doing that with partnerships across the state and people in the state from the naacp to the lawyers committee on civil rights that's doing lexapro tex to national protection and florida immigrant coalition. all of the organizations are working in a much more coordinated way more than anyway before. educating our folks. taking calm from confusion and really saying that we won't be intimidated. we'll have people at the polls trained, we'll have lawyers. we'll be in the streets and on the airwaves and in the pulpits getting our folks out this election season. >> gihan in miami, i appreciate your reminding us that just the act of voting is in and of itself a kind of uprising that's very useful for us as we continue to move towards election day. everybody stay right there. because when we come back, we'll explain what's at play with the psychology of voter suppression. more this week in voter suppression when we come back.

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now you can test-drive snapshot before you switch. visit progressive.com today. we're back with this week in voter suppression, florida edition. voter intimidation and purging and republican voter fraud in the sunshine state. that was hard to say. how do the factors play into the election in one of the swing iest of the swing state. john, you were making a point about kind of the psychology of the -- the intimidation efforts that we're looking at, what is the psychology of that? >> i would make several points of that. let me just say sto start, i'm incredibly sorry to be talking about this issue in 2012 in the

united states. it's almost beyond belief. there's a long history in the literature talking about learned helplessness. people feel disconnected from a system, they feel the system is not taking care of them. ironically, in the psychology literature, that's a risk factor for depression. people are trying to treat that saying you we want you to be engaged and focused. we learned about learned helplessness. used as a method. they're trying to produce this sense in people that the government doesn't care about them. that the government doesn't -- isn't concerned about their issues and in a way they're focusing on people who i think have the most to lose in a way. >> sort of the most vulnerable people. when you say things like yesterday with ohio, the felony language and you've got the felony issues in communities of color, those are the folks who most likely feel intimidated by that. >> absolutely it happens into and engenders an anxiety for

people who have a lot of concerns about the system itself. also, again the people who are the most vulnerable. the elderly who are lower socioeconomic status. it's not just happenstance that they're using this language in this context. >> i think about the mass confusion, particularly with the elderly. you see this in for example the kind of marketing that will go to the elderly. that purposely is meant to confuse and stress people out, particularly with new information coming on a regular basis. people end up opting out of the system al to the. >> i lot of elderly people, they think they're being turned on. it sends the subtle message, it increases the risk of this kind of anxiety absolutely. >> on the one hand, there's a subtle and even insidious impact off the voter themselves. on the individual. but you were telling this amazing story that you have got to tell on air. it turns out it's not at all subtle in terms of strategy.

>> right. you know, we think of voter suppression as people who are mean and don't want people ho don't like them to vote. in a lot of ways, republicans are looking at the math. the ability to attract voters and keep the voters they can't attract away. we were talking about the brief. i interviewed jim greer the former head of the republican party of florida who is fighting a legal battle of his own. he was run out of part by charlie chris. what he told me is after the 200 election, democrats were loving charlie crist. they kept polls open. >> if you were in line at 7:00, you were allowed to go in and vote. this caused almost hysteria among his own party. republicans blamed him for barack obama winning florida and according to jim greer, consultants who consult on legislation were in charlie krist's office demanding from a bill be crafted and put through

the legislature that would get rid of early voting or limit it. those people in line were mostly democrats and largely african-american voting for barack obama. that law eventually did get passed but charlie crist reject itted it. >> this early voting thing is not a joke. we saw a new poll that the president is leading mitt romney 59% to 31% among early voters. bill? >> someone called this a voter uprising. that's exactly what it is. it was an uprising in 2008. this is the old america, clint eastwood, versus the new america, scarlett johansson. it's an uprising because the democratic coalition, the obama voters are disproportionately young and newer immigrants. these people don't have a lot of voting experience. you want to discard people from voting, doesn't take a lot of effort. you supply poll watchers, you

put guards and policemen this and they feel intimidated. you challenge their votes. stel stand at polling places and they will audio or videotape the voters. they will warn them if you're not a real citizen and they vote. they're not going to stand in line. they're going to leave. they're trying to suppress the new america. >> i think what's so key here is win or lose, right, whether president obama is re-elected or not, this is bad for democracy. on the next day, whether the president is re-elected or not, and whether the benefit to early voting the next time would go to the republican, like so what? if you're standing in line at 7:00, you ought to be allowed to cast your vote. early voting is good for democracy. voting should happen on weekends, not on tuesdays. i think we have to be prepared at this moment never to be those people who go into the party office and make a partisan claim about this. this is about the fundamental

way of our democracy. >> we go back to the ideas of truth and the republican argument. illegal immigrants vote egg. it's scooby doo logic. you're supposed to make me believe that somebody snuck across the border to vote for obama as the first thing they do. allowing them to make the arguments poisons the dialog about something that's fundamental. >> republicans throw out this idea of in-person voter fraud because they want to pass legislation because they know the results. people what happens at a polling place. it isn't that you stand quietly in line. there are people handing out handbills. there are candidates jockeying for your vote. it's a people oriented process. i've seen people videotape. it is tremendously intimidating. it's psychologically an assault on you. you're like who is that person? people in florida say make sure you paid your latest child

support and hand out flyers. >> you don't have to pay your child support to vote. you should pay your child support. but you don't have to, to vote. thank you, bill schneider. the rest are staying for more. next, i'll talk about the secret illness that's plaguing millions. of any small business credit card! how does this thing work? oh, i like it! [ garth ] sven's small business earns 2% cash back on every purchase, every day! woo-hoo!!! so that's ten security gators, right? put them on my spark card! why settle for less? testing hot tar... great businesses deserve the most rewards! [ male announcer ] the spark business card from capital one. choose unlimited rewards with 2% cash back or double miles on every purchase, every day! what's in your wallet? here's your invoice.

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disorder in a given year. nearly one in ten children live with a serious mental or emotional disorder. $79 billion is the economic cost of mental illness in the united states. $63 billion of that cost is from loss of productivity. what with the proper treatment and support, 70 to 90% of people living with mental illness can reduce the impact of their illness and increase their quality of life. getting a proper diagnosis and treatment can save lives. suicide is the third leading cause of death for young people between 15 and 24. more than 90% of people who die by suicide also had a diagnosable mental disorder. if you are a person in an institution for a mental illness, that institution is far more likely to be a prison than a hospital. in fact, the three largest inpatient facilities in this country are jails. currently, there are at least

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on friday, we learned that congressman jesse jackson junior is the subject of a federal investigation involving alleged financial i am pry propriety. when he joined us to talk about his efforts to raise the minimum wage -- >> the only group since 2007 that has not experienced some form of pay increase have been those americans that are locked in the minimum wage. why are they locked in the minimum wage? because the congress of the united states has set the standard at $7.25. later on that same day, june 10th, jackson vanished from the public eye when according to family members he collapsed at their home in washington.

two months later, after an extended leave of absence from congress that left his constituents mystified about his disappeance, doctors at the mayo clinic announced that congressman jackson was under treatment for bipolar disorder. it's a public declaration of an illness that's often shrouded in shy silence and seekry. however voters judge congressman jackson on the allegations about his finances, he should not have to bear the stigma about the reality of his health. as one of my guests today can attest from firsthand experience, there's no shame in living with mental illness. joining my panel is danielle bell ton editor at large of clutch magazine online and a writer for bet's don't sleep and living with bipolar disorder. another guest, jonathan metzl is with us. and joy and jason are still with us. danielle, wanted to come to you first. talk to me about what it means

to be a person living with bipolar disorder and highly successful, professional. i love and read your work all the time. >> i think for me, it was -- i felt responsibility to come out and actually talk about it. i struggled with it for so long. for most of my 20s. i lost my 20s to bipolar disorder. it was very difficult. don't take anything for granted. lots of help from my family and from medical care-givers. came out on the other side. i promised myself during a hospitalization in 2006 that if i got to a point of stability again, i would come out and talk about it. the hardest part of going through that, i felt i don't see anybody living with this disease. the only people i'm seeing are people who are sick, struggling, can't get out of bed in the more than. that's bleak to think that's your future. there was a point in my life where i thought i would have to live with my parents forever. >> it's interesting for you to use the language of coming out to talk about it.

people only have to come out in circumstances where the culture is going to shame and silence you for whatever that identity or experience is. typically, the advocate of coming out of one kind or another are exactly about this point. the folks who get to define who that is are negative. >> i mean, going through this and just coming out the other side and see that i was still able to have a career, i am able to live on my own. i was able to get normalcy back. get my identity back. i lost all of that during the time i was sick. i kept thinking, wow, if i had just seen that during some of the darkest periods of my life, maybe they wouldn't have been dark. i felt that i had to talk approximate it. people try to get me talk about it when i was sick. i was vocal. when i'm sick, i'm focused on getting well. that's my priority. it is tough to go out with that

stigma and say i'm a woman living with type two bipolar disorder. not everyone is going to be open-minded about it. i needed to be coming from a place of strength and i needed that stability in order to speak out. >> jonathan, danielle talking about the personal aspect of it. but there's a policy implication here. in part because of the stigma and shame, we have not had parity in how for example health insurance manages and covers the treatment of psychiatric disorders. if you have can dcer or diabete we feel you should have coverage. if you're managing bipolar, you get your four visits and that's it. >> there's a stigma in the health -- i want to add, if th in a way it's straightforward. stigma bad, why don't we treat that. it's complicated and multifactorial. there are many kinds of the --

congressman jackson is suffering from an illness that people look pretty much well, the hypomanic phase. a lot of times they're actually better at their jobs and then they collapse and have depression. they're stuck at home and often suicidal. people will say he was just at work, in a way the stigmatization of bipolar 2 disorder is complicated because people function well. on the outside. there are other forms of illness like schizophrenia where it's different. ties into soesh yoe economics. >> we tend to believe that people who are schizophrenic of are violent. the stigma around that. he woo hear about mass shootings, the next thing you hear is i bet he was schizophrenic. part of what i heard in the political ether around representative jackson, congressman jackson is he's lying. he's trying to avoid federal investigation so he's not really

sick. i think that's part of what that bipolar stigma is. if he was on our show that day, how could he have collapsed later in the day. schizophrenia, for example, there are aggregate studies that show as a group, people with schizophrenia are far less violent than the general populous. but we build prisons and reinforce that idea through a structural violence that reinforces the stigmatizations of illness. it's structural. >> one of the structures we can begin to say is making some improvement is the affordable care act. the achievement of president obama's first term. it's moving us towards parity with the aca and particularly emphasizing integration and coordination of physical and mental health services. this strikes me on the one hand as a sort of critically important contribution of aca, but we don't hear about it much. >> we don't her a hear a lot of details at all about it.

you brought it exactly the point i was going to ask. do you think that it's complicated to discuss it because of jesse jackson jr. and his legal problems are sort of now associated with his coming out about his mental health issues and whether or not that's going to make it even harder to have this discussion. as you said, people said he was saying that because he was in trouble. >> over and over again because we're a treating mental illnesses and disorders through the prison system instead of through the medical system or is something else. i think there's always this notion of are these folks playing crazy? making it up in order to somehow shield themselves from responsibility? so we hear that as a part of that discourse and stigma. >> yeah. it's that old myth, the '70s mob movie, he's pretending he's feeble of mind so he can't get prosecuted. that's part of the stigma. i can speak about this from the college professor perspective.

you have young ambitious students who were never diagnosed. they were in a more controlled environment. they get to freshman year of college and don't understand why they can't get out of bed. they think they're lazy and they have a fear that no one will believe them. even colleges and high schools need to be more active in sort of addressing. the young people know that there are options out there. >> i mean, i don't know what your -- dramatic differences in which kind of bodies are most likely to be believed when they present with certain kinds of symptoms. we'll stay on this topic as soon as we come back. speaking of different kind of bodies, you know, being gay not so long ago was actually categorized as being mentally ill. more on all of this when we come back. [ male announcer ] feeling like a shadow of your former self? c'mon, michael! get in the game! [ male announcer ] don't have the hops for hoops with your buddies? lost your appetite for romance? and your mood is on its way down.

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national national coming out day last week on october 11th. it's a long way from the days when the official lines of homosexuality said it was an illness instead of an identity. that's how same sex self-loving identified people were identified by the book known as the bible of the american psychiatry, the diagnostic and statistical manual known at dsm. it draws a line between what is and is not mental illness. according to the current edition of the book being transgender still does. it's a rye minder of how historically, although mental illness may be in the brains of those with the disease, exactly who qualifies as mentally ill is in the minds of those making the diagnosis. i want to ask about this, jonaan. do we -- should we move towards saying mental illness is like physical illnesses like diabetes and cancer and therefore reduce

the stigma, use pharmaceuticals to address it. what was crazy, it was a culture that said being gay was a mental illness. in other words, where should we be focusing our attention of treatment? >> it's a great question to start this part of the conversation. what i argue in my book, it's not enough to take the terminology out of the dsm. in the '70s, there was all kinds of crazy stuff in the dsm 2 at the time. we had home sosexuality as an illness and there was a definition about schizophrenia. >> i want to show this image. i love it from your book. this was for physicians, right? >> right. >> if you see somebody who looks like this, maybe they need to be medicated. when we look at that image, if we can see it from jonathan's book, it basically looks like somebody in the middle of a

protest in the 1960s. >> the thing is there's a long history of medicalizing known as social issues or conditions, protests. what i argue is it's not enough to take that out of the dsm. in a way the stigmatization is what happens after we take it out. it's embedded in the cultural unconscience. addressing stigma as we were talking about before is in part looking at the afterlife, the remnant of the associations that we've made. certainly, this will be a big issue as the dsm v comes out. people critiquing the text are saying there's a broader definition of illness. that's a good thing, more people will get treatment and care. at the same time, there's the worry that we're going to overmedicalize certain conditions and opens the door for other issues. >> we finally have that image

available. like so here's the guy that needs haldol. he looks like yams brown. it was in the archives of psychiatry after in the aftermath of the detroit riots. this is a person with a clenched fist, sign of black power. it's inverted. it's a dramatic example of many i found in the book. particularly rash yl plcial pol protests. >> someone as who is managing, how do you manage the pharmaceutical intervention which can be critical and also the human experience in. >> there has to be a balance. it sounds cliche to say that over and over. it's about finding the balance. it works the same with medication versus talk therapy.

you need both to get well. the problem you run into trying to get diagnosed. you're basically a guinea pig the first few years. a lot of times unless you have the time or money or ability for a long-term hospitalization so they can observe you, getting a diagnosis can be very difficult. it took five years to be diagnosed. i was misdiagnosed with everything. from ptsd to depression, and dissociative disorder. which i'm pretty sure i'm not more than one person. i was relieved when i found out i had bipolar type 2. what does that mean? i was on 11 different medications. i know i was overmedicated but it was hard to find a psychiatrist that will listen to you longer than 15 minutes. >> danielle, as we move into our sort of towards the end here, if you did have to dissociative disorder, they called the reality of the condition of

blackness in america was having double consciousness. within the context of american racism, it would be tough to say. more in just a moment. but first, it's time for a preview of "weekends with alex witt."preview of "weekends with alex witt." hello, michael -- i'm sorry. we were talking about michael steele and howard dean. they're going to join me for a strategy talk. the sunday talkshow is lighting up, and another story getting a lot of traction, the florida board of education has approved a new plan calling for different expectations for different races. an example, 90% of asian students need to be at or above grade level in reading, as opposed to 74% of black students by 2018. should america abolish the electoral college where the winner of the popular vote wins the election?

plus, morning joe in office politics. >> yes, i am melissa. and don't go away. i have words of wisdom next.

>> ashley is our show intern this semester. next month she will vote for the first time. she's also a student at the school that will host the presidential town hall style debate on tuesday night. i asked ashley what she hopes to see and hear from the candidates. >> on tuesday i definitely want to hear about womens rights. it wasn't discussed at all in the first debate and not only reproductive rights but health care as well. some people believe health care should be a privilege. i believe that's also a right. on top of that, all these debates are on college campuses,

and in the last debate, i remember the word student loans coming up three times. but you're on a college campus, so of course, this is something you need to talk about. >> on blaf of nerd land interns ashley and across the country, i'm asking the candidates to up their respective games on tuesday night. as political commentators point out, there will be 65 million millennials eligible to vote in november, and if they turn out at the same rate that they voted in 2008, just over 50%, they could amount to almost one quarter of the electorate. now young voters today are more diverse group than any in history. they come of age in the shadow of 9/11, in the aftermath of hurricane katrina. and our country has been at war most of their lives. they face significant employment. steep student loans and deep uncertainty that they will enjoy the benefits of the social

safety net. president obama, mr. romney talked to them. i'm talk saying just because you're on a college campus you should only talk to young voters. as a teacher i'm confident that prepping your responses as though you're talking to a classroom is good strategy if you can explain in clear, no nonsense, honest terms how the agendas and policies will approve their lives. you will have communicated effectively to every potential voter listening. young people can sniff out b.s. from a mile away. don't plan double talk or evasion, an if you lie, they're going to fact check you online in realtime. and don't pander. young people, like other voters, hate it when politicians are patronizi patronizing. this is it. town hall style debate. a chance to convince the final undecided voters. so on behalf of ashley and her peers all across the country, bring your a game. and that's our show for today.

thank you to jason, jonathan, joy and danielle. thank you to you at home for watching on this day, the anniversary of the publication of winnie the pooh. coming up, "weekends with alex witt." . great! it's always good to have a backup plan, in case i get hit by a meteor. wow, your hair looks great. didn't realize they did photoshop here. hey, good call on those mugs. can't let 'em see what you're drinking. you know, i'm glad we're both running a nice, clean race. no need to get nasty. here's your "honk if you had an affair with taylor" yard sign. looks good. [ male announcer ] fedex office. now save 50% on banners.

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